First World Report of Internal Power Cable Repair in Left Ventricular Assist Device Jarvik 2000: Case Report.

Background: There are limited clinical reports concerning internal power cable fixing in left ventricular assist device (L-VAD) patients. Actually there are no reports in the literature about Jarvik 2000 internal cable repair. We show the first description of a technique for surgical reparation of such a fatal complication.

Adenosine receptors expression in cardiac fibroblasts of patients with left ventricular dysfunction due to valvular disease.

Context: Adenosine restores tissue homeostasis through the interaction with its membrane receptors (AR) expressed on fibroblasts, endothelial cells, smooth muscle cells and leukocytes, but their modulation is still not fully understood.

Objective: To evaluate whether changes in the transcriptomic profiling of adenosine receptors (AR) occur in cardiac fibroblasts (CF) of patients (pts) with LV dysfunction due to valvular disease (V). The secondary aim was to compare in the same pts the results obtained at cardiac level with those found in circulating leukocytes.

Longitudinal Strain Stress-Echo Evaluation of Aged Marginal Donor Hearts: Feasibility in the Adonhers Project.

Background: The Adonhers (aged donor heart rescue by stress-echo protocol) Project was created to resolve the current shortage of donor hearts. One of the great limits of stress echo is the operator dependency. Speckle-tracking echocardiography (STE), offering a quantitative objective analysis of myocardial deformation, may help to overcome this limit.

Cardiogenic shock complicating myocardial infarction in a doped athlete.

Abuse of doping agents may pose a higher risk for heart disease including acute myocardial infarction. We report the case of a 50-year-old body-builder Caucasian man with a long-standing abuse of nandrolone and erythropoietin that developed a ventricular septal defect following acute myocardial infarction. This mechanical complication led to cardiogenic shock ultimately treated with the implantation of a circulatory support by means of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.